


The Boy on the Sidewalk

by LuxeApocalypse



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, M/M, Memories, Nygmobblepot Week 2018, Nygmobblepot Week Day 4: Martin, Small Towns, Tension, canon-divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-06 05:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14050446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxeApocalypse/pseuds/LuxeApocalypse
Summary: Written for Nygmobblepot Week, Day 4: Martin.  A resolution and a new, idyllic life in bucolic surrounds beckons for Oswald and Martin.   Nothing could possibly go wrong.... Right?This work may be the first part of a two-parter.





	The Boy on the Sidewalk

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to winedarksea for her brilliant suggestion concerning a line in this story!
> 
> Author's note: This was completed and uploaded just before 4.15, when I had no idea where Martin was being held. I assumed he'd be in another children's home outside of Gotham. Therefore, this story is now canon-divergent.
> 
> Author's update: I'm reworking this story to make it more Christmas / holidays-specific. Hey, it's the season! I also want to get it finished before Gotham season 5 airs.

Oswald Cobblepot remembers being twelve years old, sitting kerbside on New Years' Eve: friendless, picking his face, morosely poking shards of glass with a stick.

It was too late for him to be out alone, and his mother would have raised holy hell if she'd caught him, but sometimes the lure of the dark, quiet street proved too strong. He'd push open his bedroom window – carefully, so as not to make a creak – shimmy four storeys down a rusty drainpipe and settle himself down on the sidewalk, waiting for something to happen.

Something. _Anything_. Nothing ever did, of course. Nobody ever came by. Occasionally there'd be the sound of smashing glass, the dregs of an argument fading into the distance, the flickering light of a cop car on patrol. He hadn't been so much a penguin in those days as a street rat; scuttling and evasive, melting into the walls at the slightest sign of alarm.

The area was disconcertingly quiet. He assumed most people were out celebrating – if they had any reason to do so. His mother always went to bed early on New Year's Eve; he wondered if she associated the holiday with a sad memory. The buildings either side of the street enveloped him; made him feel like he was looking up at the sky from the bottom of a deep well.

Suddenly, fireworks exploded over the city; airborne sequins criss-crossing the sliver of sky overhead. He watched them, thrilled. But soon they were gone, leaving dripping trails of smoke, a fleeting piece of magic out of reach, without substance.

The fireworks represented a world closed off to him, like Disneyland.  Like the revels still playing downtown; like celebrations with friends, like holidays with family, they remained beyond him, not belonging to or meant for him.  Only stolen, just for a moment; in secret, at a glance, from a distance.

*********

Tonight, on Christmas Eve, Oswald looks up at a sky that's expansive and clear; strewn with crushed-diamond stars and topped by a fine moon.  A windchime stirs, emitting a delicate, tinkling thread of night music. Every house is swathed in jewelled lights, inflatable Santas and Rudolfs, trees glittering in the windows. A door opens at the end of the winding street, glowing and welcoming, then shutters again.

Oswald never ceases to be amazed at how easy it had been to walk away.

In the end, it had been as simple as moving from one room to the next.

He knows he's a lucky man.

Luckier, perhaps, than he deserves.

 *********

He recalls when the realization finally sank in. It had been a few months after the Riddler had broken him out of Arkham. Sofia Falcone was dead. He'd regained his empire, piece by painstaking piece. His former associates came crawling back in short order. He'd retained only the most useful, telling the rest to go to hell.

He'd been standing at his office window at the Iceberg Lounge, looking out; it occurred to him that the city seemed to sag under the weight of its burdens. He thought about the Riddler. He had to remind himself that Ed – _his_ Ed, not that faded facsimile who'd resurfaced in the Narrows – was gone for good. Or was he? Had he been fully absorbed into the persona of that green … _thing?_   Was the Riddler the ultimate manifestation of the Ed he had loved? Thinking about it gave him a headache, and it didn't matter anyway, because the Riddler remained elusive.

In any case, he had more pressing matters to attend to. At one time, he'd relished the cut and thrust of the life, even as it taunted him, floored him. He'd always managed to pull himself back up. He'd done so over and over again.

But that had been before.

There was an opened letter on his desk, the one from the children's home thirty miles outside the Gotham city limits. _Martin is unsettled,_ it said. _He wants to see you._ Oswald hadn't really wanted to place the boy in another group home. But, given the gravity of the situation at the time, it was the best he could do. To his credit, Victor Zsasz had never disclosed the boy's location to Sofia Falcone. _At least the treacherous bastard has_ some _scruples left,_ he thought.

He staggered away from the window, wincing at the twinge of pain in his ruined leg. He regarded the office, the piles of work on his desk, sank into his throne, and exhaled.

_I don't want this anymore._

**********

He'd sold everything. Just like that. The club, his business interests, even the manor. He visited his mother's grave, then his father's, silently asking forgiveness for forsaking his legacy; the legacy that had proved tainted. No good would ever come from remaining in Gotham, presiding over _that_ club, residing in _that_ house; the house that was too vast, too cold, and saturated with miserable memories.

But he wasn't doing it for himself. Perhaps that's why it felt right.

He'd never allow Martin to become that boy on the sidewalk, waiting for something … for _someone_ who never came, melting into the walls, unseen and voiceless.

***********

Oswald's new home is an airy, Colonial-style property with three bedrooms. He enters the kitchen, brews a pot of tea; carries it on a tray into the lounge. He thinks back to the day he and Martin had arrived in the town. The transition hadn't been seamless to begin with. Oswald still carried that deep-seated feeling of distrust towards others, which occasionally reared its head around innocently helpful neighbors. It had taken him a while to understand that people could actually be _kind_ without some sort of agenda at work. This had been a revelation; like an addict, he'd needed to detox, to shed his carapace, to allow himself to be vulnerable and ask for help – and to appreciate any help offered to him in turn. 

So he'd thrown himself into becoming a pillar of the community; a staple presence at local events. Somebody even suggested he should run for Mayor; he'd had a good chuckle to himself over that one. Sometimes he wondered whether the locals knew about his past; if they knew, they didn't let on. Perhaps they were willing to give a break to any person who sincerely wanted to start over. After all, it wasn't as if an organised crime empire could flourish in a place like this, right? No chance of running into anyone from his old life here.

His efforts appear to be working.  Martin is thriving, and Oswald feels better within himself. The pain in his leg feels distant, dulled to an ambient throb. He no longer requires handfuls of painkillers to get through his waking hours; a few Advils a day does the trick. The soothing bottle of Scotch, ever-present at the end of a trying day, is a distant memory. No more late nights choked by nightclub smoke; no more excessively rich meals snatched during the small hours at the fanciest restaurants in the city.

Instead, there's clean air, home-cooked food (he'd rediscovered his love of cooking here; one of the few things he brought with him from Gotham was his mother's precious book of recipes, written in her elegant, swirling hand, the milky blue ink waterlogged and blotched in places), lazy afternoons, walks with Martin for as long as his leg holds up. He retires at a respectable hour; he rises early to make breakfast and drive Martin to school – an excellent school, with an exemplary record in supporting children who communicate differently.

Money is no problem. The combined sale of his estate and business interests means he'll never need to work again. Regardless, he considers it important to instil in Martin a sense of the value of work. Shortly after moving here, he'd purchased a suit-hire business; he also acquired a silent partnership in a neighborhood restaurant and bar. All above board. Of course.

In the lounge, a large blue fir tree languishes in the corner, groaning under the weight of baubles and tinsel glistening like crushed sugar, candy canes, and gold lights twinkling in the chasms between the branches. There are stockings over the fireplace; a scented candle suffuses the room with warm vanilla spice. Martin's gifts are wrapped and placed carefully around the tree. Oswald glances at the small, childishly-wrapped cluster of gifts next to Martin's.  He bends down and sneaks a quick look at the tags.  _To Dad. Merry Christmas, love Martin._ He smiles.  

Martin himself is tucked up in bed. In the kitchen, the turkey is prepared and ready to go, and Oswald recalls just how pleasurable it had been to get the house ready for the holidays this time.  He hadn't really bothered in recent years.  He'd spent most Christmases alone, so there had been very little point, save for that one year when Ed was living with him. He'd pay some goon to put up a tree in the manor, and that was it.  Gotham never slept; business was business, and business didn't stop just because of a holiday. 

He thinks he might catch some TV before he goes to bed. Most of the programming is dreadful, of course, but there might be a documentary worth watching. He relaxes into his armchair; sips his tea, flips through the channels on the remote. No such luck. There's a tacky soap opera; some naff "Countdown to Santa!" thing, a repeat of a Christmas cookery show he's already watched, a vulgar 'comedy' where every other word seems to start with the letter _'f'._

He switches off the TV and glances at the clock. It's 11:15 already. Perhaps it's time he turned in.

 **********

He's at the bottom of the hallway stairs when he hears it – the lightest of taps; one, two, _three._

The wind has picked up; he puts the sound down to the branches of the cherry tree rapping against the window.

Ignoring it, he picks his way up the first few steps, yawning.

That's when he hears it again - louder, more urgent this time. 

Grousing to himself, Oswald staggers over to the front door and wrenches it open.

“Who the hell _is_ this!” he hisses, then freezes. 

Then glares, hard; certain his heart has just stopped stone-dead in his chest. 

“I'd say the ghost of Christmas past, only I wouldn't look _quite_ so enticing in a white sheet, wouldn't you agree?"

***********

That voice.  Silky, snide.  Coiling around him.

Everlasting legs, encased in green. A cane crowned by a stylized question mark.  Glasses.  Dark eyes, glinting.

And with that, Gotham and all its storms roll in; bringing poisoned air, a corrosive tang, a sinister electricity.

The Riddler leans against the wall, smirking and doffing his hat.

 _"_ Hello, Oswald.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
